For years now I have been monitoring traffic to numerous Web sites. Always of interest is discovering how users come by these sites – is it via a link from elsewhere, via a search engine, directly by entering the URL?
An example of one very prevalent method is shown below.
The visitor, and I am guessing it was just one, used the phrase “glicit.com” to find this site.
Why?
Why if you already know the URL would you bother searching for it? If you haven’t lost your car keys you don’t go looking for them. You don’t have to!
Have people become slaves to Google, thinking that nothing exists on the Internet unless it is found via Google?
If you know the URL just type it in the address bar of your browser. Hit enter. There, you’re done. You have reached the site in one step. You are not doing a Google-search, then locating the link and then clicking.
I have asked users why they do this and the responses have varied.
However the most common is that “my boss can’t see what I’m doing if I get to a site through Google”. Eh, sorry, you’re wrong. That’s just a myth that has somehow perpetuated among office staff worldwide.
The next most frequent explanation is that “there is no other way”. Trust me, there is. Use it and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and effort.
